She placed a round tin into my hand, showing none of her acolyte’s reticence. For some reason, I did not open my mouth to tell her off for touching me. But I did look down at the palm-sized tin with skepticism.
“Cover that mark,” she said, her eyes lifting to my forehead.
Her gaze remained steady, but the acolyte at her side paled. His eyes flew from my forehead, down to my hands and the pointed tips of my nails and back again, understanding and something between horror and fear dawning on his face for a fraction of a second before he blinked back to a façade of neutrality.
Thatwas the reaction I’d expected. And the one I planned to use to my advantage.
I shook my head. “I will not hide.”
“Then you will die.” The priestess did not even blink as she said it. “Even your kind must sleep. And there is no protection offered between the gates. Those guards stay here.”
I did blink, processing her meaning. While I resided in the temple, the armed guards would prevent any violence. But while the Mercy and Justice Gates were only a day apart, the others spread out at increasing intervals of distance. And there would be no one to stop the other supplicants from banding together and murdering me in my sleep if they saw me as a threat.
Dark God save me. My best weapon—my only weapon, really—was my power. And I could not use it without sentencing myself to death.
Because even though I was an immortal being whose body would never age nor organs tire, I could be wounded. And unlike the fae, I did not possess the gift of rapid healing. If I received a mortal wound, I would die with all the indignity of a human.
I curled my hands into fists to hide the points of my nails.
“If you cannot control yourself, then stay clear of the other supplicants,” the priestess advised. Or ordered. Her tone was unchanged.
No comment on the fact that the fae were the reason all of this had happened. Their greed was the source of everything terrible that had happened in Velora over the past four hundred years.
As if the witches and humans haven’t taken full advantage of their absence,my conscience argued.
I wouldn’t feel guilty for what I’d done to survive. I refused.
“Pray at each of the altars and then you may eat.” By which time the fae female and other supplicants would have left the blood fountain, her order implied. She did not wait to see if I would comply. But the guards on the other side of the temple tracked her every movement, awaiting her orders.
My course was set. What I wanted did not matter. It never really had.
“Acolytes are allowed to accompany supplicants while they pray,” Tomin offered.
I hadn’t exactly forgotten the boy, but I certainly didn’t want him hovering at my side for the next hour.
“No.”
His mouth twitched for a few seconds before he plastered his smile back into place. “As you wish.” He hurried off after the priestess, presumably back to monitoring the temple doors.
My chest twinged, right between my breasts. I rolled my shoulders to dispel the sensation. He reminded me of someone, too.
But that was inevitable when you’d spent four hundred years walking the same continent, I told myself. It was possible I’d met one of his ancestors at some point. And I cared as little about the acolyte as I did every other person I met.
I did not want or need friends. I had my coven sisters. And I’d pray at a thousand altars if it earned me back my place with them.
CHAPTER 9
BEFORE
My middle sistercame of age the same year my father reached the pinnacle of his power. Human spectacles had become even more opulent since the disappearance of the fae, as if we were determined to prove we were just as powerful and prosperous. No one was more dedicated to this purpose than my father.
“Two hundred and twenty-one guests,” Janessa crowed as we waited in the courtyard. The temple was already full to bursting.
I shivered against the cool late spring breeze that seemed determined to hold on, despite the longer days that drew us closer and closer to summer. Janessa had chosen sleeveless gowns for me and Rylynn, her attendants in this inane spectacle of womanhood.
“And I had a hundred. You have outstripped me. Are you satisfied?” Rylynn snapped. She should not have been here at all—only unmarried women were attendants. Having reached her own womanhood three years before, Rylynn should have been long married. Except our father was so drunk upon his own wealth that not a single of the dozen offers made for Rylynn’s hand had satisfied him.
“Iamsatisfied,” Janessa said. The tallest of us, she looked right down her perfectly straight nose at Rylynn.
